We Wear the Mask Literary Elements

The unnamed and ungendered speakers use the first person plural pronoun “we” to refer to their community of individuals who must all “wear the mask,” i.e. perform certain identities. (These speakers presumably represent the African-American community.)

Rondeau (the traditional thirteen-line rondeau plus two additional lines for the refrain, “We wear the mask”); iambic tetrameter (with variations, such as the refrain); two rhymes used throughout (e.g. “lies”/”eyes,” “guile”/“smile”)

“We wear the mask that grins and lies”: The mask functions as a metaphor for the performance of emotions and identities. The performance here is an insincere one which creates a façade of positivity (“grins and lies”).

“With torn and bleeding hearts we smile”: The hearts are not “torn” and “bleeding” in the literal sense; they are metaphors for the psychological injury “we” must suffer yet conceal.

“This debt we pay to human guile”: The debt is not an actual monetary transaction but one’s figurative indebtedness to the faculty of dissimulation (“human guile”).

“We wear the mask”; “Why should the world be over-wise”: alliteration of the “w”

“It hides [...] and shades [...]”: consonance of the “d” and “s”

“And mouth with myriad subtleties”: alliteration of the “m”

“oh the clay is vile”: consonance of the “l”

The situational irony that frames this poem is the incongruity between the emotions communicated by the mask (e.g., happiness, contentment, hospitality) and those that lie behind the mask (e.g., suffering, grief, anger).

Lyric poetry; political poetry

While the setting is unspecified for most of the piece, the mention of “clay” in Stanza 3 takes the poem to a rural (and perhaps also agricultural or migratory) setting.

Assertive, critical, forceful, defiant, mournful

The speakers (“us”) who wear the mask (African Americans) vs. the rest of the world (white Americans)

The impression of contentment given off by the mask vs. the suffering hidden behind the mask; those who wear the mask vs. those who do not and are unable to understand those who do

The poem reaches its climax in Stanza 3, in which “we” call out to Christ for help, and tread on "vile clay." It illustrates the intensity of the psychological and physical suffering that mask-wearers experience.

The rhetorical question that commences Stanza 2 foreshadows the answer given in Stanza 3: to protest a world that is being “over-wise” by allowing it to continue to “dream other-wise.”

“We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries / To thee from tortured souls arise”: The Biblical allusion to Jesus Christ illustrates the mask-wearers' desperation for salvation and empathy.

“but oh the clay is vile”: The reference to clay may be a continuation of the Biblical allusion, as it evokes the Creation in the Book of Genesis and the clay out of which humankind was made.

“Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs?”: The “tears and sighs” are metonymies which are associated with, and represent, the emotion of grief.

“We sing, but oh the clay is vile / Beneath our feet, and long the mile”: The “clay” and the long “mile,” too, are metonymies which evoke labor, toil, and physical suffering, by association.

“And mouth with myriad subtleties”: The word “myriad” refers to a number that is so large that it is uncountable, and thus “myriad subtleties” is a hyperbole that exaggerates the degree to which the mask-wearers must conceal their true feelings behind subtle, self-censored expressions.